“Ripped and Torn”
Hey, remember last week when I talked extensively about media that had really disappointing endings that I felt kind of soiled my otherwise deep love for them? Yeah. Let’s talk about DOOM Eternal.
I would say that DOOM Eternal is, overall, a good game. I very much like it, evidenced, perhaps, by that random short review I shat out a couple months back when I didn’t have the time or emotional energy to write a full piece for the week and I didn’t want to resort to Spectral Crown again. That was… not a good week. But that’s in the past now! And so is the entirety of DOOM Eternal! Because, when I first “reviewed” the game, if you want to call it that, the first DLC (or add-on to the game) had come out, with the game originally releasing in March 2020 and The Ancient Gods Part One in October 2020, but the second and final DLC was still an indeterminate length of time away. So I didn’t talk about my issues with The Ancient Gods Part One at the time, but I had a lot of issues with it, though I had hope that The Ancient Gods Part Two would remedy that. And now that TAG (let’s just refer to it that way for now) is out and I’ve completed it on Ultra-Violence, I can safely say that I have a verdict on the entire package of the game. And it is… a confused one. To sum it up, I’d say that DOOM Eternal’s overall package is like when you hit a baseball in a line-drive, and it looks like it’s going exactly where you want it, and then it lands smack dab in your neighbor’s bird bath, exploding a robin in the process. It’s incredibly fun, empowering, brutal, bloody, and surprisingly unpleasant right at the end.
So, mild content warnings, since Eternal and TAG are violent, gory things. But, like I mentioned last time, and as I still believe is the case, they are violent in a way that is, well, not necessarily tasteful, but at least palatable. DOOM, at least in the newest two (DOOM 2016 and Eternal), isn’t violence for violence’s sake or violence with malice. It is a violence of comedy, over-the-top and shocking in the same way that slapstick comedy is. It’s like in Evil Dead 2, or Robocop, or the elevator scene in Cabin in the Woods (well, maybe not that one). It’s absurd, moist, sticky violence that has the same sensibilities of hitting someone over the head with a hammer in The Three Stooges, but instead of a “bonk” sound effect, it’s a “bonk” sound effect accompanied by blood shooting out their ears like a fire hydrant. That’s DOOM Eternal and TAG, parts one and two. Hell, TAG part two adds Looney Tunes sound effects and swirling stars over demons’ heads. The whole game nails that over-the-top aesthetic really, really well. In fact, that’s the one thing most consistent between the main game and the DLC; the sound effects, animations, atmosphere and world design are consistently gorgeous to look at and also one of the dumbest fucking things I’ve ever seen, in a good way.
I didn’t actually play DOOM 2016 all that much, primarily because I just wasn’t super into the world, I guess. Everything was kind of a washed-out beige and tan for the rusted-over surface of Mars, or gloomy grey hallways of a panicking science facility, or the charred bones and flames of hell. In general, it really stuck to just one color palette, and while everything looked great, it was just kind of… meh. Not really my thing. I need color and vibrancy in my games, like a toddler, apparently. That, added on to the fact that I felt like the Doomguy moves kind of slow in the first game, kind of killed it. Mind you, I think I came into it after playing DUSK, which is fast, crunchy, spooky, and a treat to look at, so DOOM 2016 didn’t do a whole lot for me. But not so in Eternal; right from the start you’re fighting in overrun cities, or lush ancient ruins, or frozen ice citadels, or Mars again, or Hell, but Hell is purple this time, and DOOM Eternal just has so much more variety in its visual design than 2016’s DOOM ever did.
And that’s something that TAG 1 and 2 both did well. They’ve got the same style of colorful levels and varied locales as the base DOOM Eternal game, adding in new places to spice up the mix. Everything is so detailed and defined to the point to artistic beauty. Some of the vistas in DOOM are genuinely breathtaking, which is not something that you’d expect from a game about moving fast and shooting demons. But that’s the other part of the visual design; the demons. They all look cool, their kill animations are perfect slapstick, and they fit naturally into the world. This gets thrown around a lot, but for good reason; playing DOOM is kind of like what I imagine it would be like to be in a thrash metal album. Or GWAR. Because the music in DOOM is bangin’. Everything is loud, frenetic, kinetic, vulgar, and extreme, and it almost never lets up, but when it does, it’s just long enough to let you appreciate the totality of the visual and aural experience that you realize that, from a pure aesthetics standpoint, the game’s a damn masterpiece, in the same way that combining Iron Maiden and Masters of the Universe would be a masterpiece. No blood punches were held.
There’s a certain level of playfulness inherent to metal music that I think tends to get overlooked. I mean, generally the lyrics are about violence or drugs or sex or all of the above at the same time, but metal music, for me, feeds into a certain fantasy of pure, unfaltering energy. I mean, what are you doing in a mosh pit except experiencing that energy? I have a hard time taking metal music, or people who really, really like metal music, too seriously, mainly because, for me, it’s intrinsically something fun. I might get lambasted for this some day, but hey, that’s how I think of it. And Eternal revels in this fun. It gets that energetic frenzy just right, keeping it up for just long enough to make you sweaty, then letting you relax a bit before the next track comes on. But how, exactly, does it manage this? One way, and one way only; tons of fucking demons.
Or, maybe two ways; tons of demons and tons of weapons to hit them with. Gameplay in DOOM Eternal is, for me, very much like playing a game of pinball, except you are the pinball, and everything else wants you dead. You zip around these crazy, blood-spattered arenas, doing double-jumps and flipping from poles and suddenly dashing through midair while you’re being pelted by rockets, balls of fire, exploding skulls, flaming dogs, and the fists of other demons. If it sounds chaotic, it’s because it is. The core gameplay loop of DOOM is mainly shoot a demon, get up close, rip its head off and suck out its innards, switch weapons, and move on the to the next guy. I mean, it’s more complex than that, thanks to the frankly outlandish armory you carry at all times, but that’s the gist of it. Each demon has a specific weak point, and each weapon is good against a specific demon. It’s like mentally juggling several games of rock-paper-scissors at once while dodging a hail of gunfire. It is, naturally, exhilarating. And almost everything is balanced to perfection, too; the game trains you how to play well in order to avoid dying over and over again like I initially did, but once you kind of get it, it’s all over. Nothing can stop you. Except, well… Marauders.
The base game of Eternal has this one enemy that’s kind of special in that you can’t hurt it except when it’s vulnerable, which it telegraphs with glowing green eyes and special sound effect. It’s called a Marauder, and truth be told, I actually kind of like them. Eternal game that’s mostly about shooting demons that are either a) much slower than you, and therefore basically stand in one spot and let you circle around them at top speeds, or b) are the speed as you, and therefore keep you on your toes at all times as they chase you down, so you’re always on the offensive. Marauders are the only enemies that realistically pose a threat, though, because you can’t just circle around them and shoot until they die, or use your shotgun grapple hook (yeah, it’s got a fucking shotgun grapple hook) to skip out of the way of their attacks. Marauders force you to play defensively, which is really, really weird in a game that’s all about speed, but I kind of like them for it at the same time. It’s something different, and I think they’re best when they come at the end of a long wave, you’ve been dodging them for five minutes to clean up the rest of the demons, and then it’s just you and the other guy, and you face off in a duel to the death. When they’re done right, they’re very satisfying.
That’s why I think they only show up a couple times in the game; because they are so hard to get right in the weird balancing act that is DOOM’s gameplay. And I’m fine with that; it’s the closest the game gets to a traditional, symmetric multiplayer experience, too, which is kind of neat. For my money, the best enemy in the game is the Doom Hunter, which is this giant cyborg demon-tank thing that, after taking enough damage, explodes out of its missile launcher to track you down through the air. And when you hit them enough, they shout “CRITICAL DAMAGE” in this sick robotic voice that I sometimes try to imitate under my breath. It is everything good about DOOM’s enemy and gameplay design, rolled into an intimidating, highly-mobile package. They are peak DOOM.
Ok, well, I’ve lauded enough praise on the game by now. I think I’ve made it perfectly clear that I very much enjoyed DOOM Eternal. All this praise stands for the base game, and most of the two expansions, too, and overall, they are great fun. But what about those issues that made me go “eh” about the end of it? Well, I think it has to do a little bit, for me at least, with weapon switching. That’s my first big issue with Eternal; there are so many weapons and tools at your disposal that, at a certain point, it becomes almost too much. You need to rebuild your armor? Better shoot some fire out your ass before killing a guy. Need some ammo? You should have scavenged for that chainsaw juice better. Want to take out a cacodemon quick? Better switch to one specific mode of one specific weapon to deal with them efficiently, otherwise you’ll waste a bunch of ammo. It’s great at first, but I played a mouse and keyboard, and constantly swapping between one thing and next got really overwhelming. Switching guns because you suddenly ran out of ammo or a new enemy type pops up is frustrating, but manageable, but the game design encourages this, since tutorials actively scream at you “USE THIS GUN AGAINST THIS ENEMY!” At it’s best, it’s like playing violent chess. At its worst, it’s a chore to constantly swap five different weapons while skipping twelve others I never use, only to be forced to use a sixth because “this new enemy is only weak against that one weapon!” Both TAG 1 and TAG 2 do this real bad. And it weakened things for me.
If I’m being honest, my issues with TAG 1 and 2 is that they leaned too heavily into the parts of the base game I really didn’t like. Like the constant forced weapon switching. Or linear level design. Not that the levels aren’t all linear, because they are, but the base game had some exploration involved, and the DLC did not. I almost want to say that the DLC felt kind of rushed, in a sense that the team behind it clearly overlooked some things that could have been done a little bit better. For TAG 1, it was balance. I felt that the base game was pretty well balanced at all times for the difficulty I was on, where my skills stacked up evenly against the enemies to give me a fair challenge. TAG 1, on the same difficulty, felt like I was banging my head against the wall, specifically when the Spirits come around. Basically, they’re these enemies that possess other enemies and give them what feels like infinite fucking health, and then when they’re exposed you have to ghostbust them into oblivion. I hate them. They make me anxious and have killed me probably more than any other enemy. They make me not want to use a certain weapon for fear of running out of ammo and then boom, Spirit shows up. Plus it seemed to me like the encounters in TAG 1 were a little tougher than the base game anyway, which is fine, but maybe I had gotten rusty, but I think I died a lot more anyway. It took the wind out of my sails, is what I’m saying.
TAG 2, on the other hand, did fix the difficulty thing. Spirit-possessed demons were a little easier to kill, and definitely felt like the fights were more on my level the second time around, but some of the decisions made for the end of the Doomguy franchise just baffled my mind. Not the end of the series, though, the devs at ID have said there’ll be more DOOM someday. I tend to focus a lot on missed potential when it comes to things that disappoint me (*cough* WandaVision *cough* Star Wars), and TAG 2 has a lot of missed potential. Not only is it the end of the DOOM Eternal saga, by the end of the game, you realize it’s the end of the entire Doomguy saga. Basically, it’s implied that you’ve been playing at the same guy through DOOM 1, DOOM 2, DOOM 3, DOOM 2016, and DOOM Eternal. Basically, TAG 2 is supposed to be what the series has been building up to since the early-to-mid 90’s. And it is a wet fart compared to what it should have been.
Graphically, mechanically, aurally (minus Mick Gordon), it’s all great. TAG 2 lives up to the technical standards set by DOOM Eternal and the ones lowered slightly by TAG 1. But the fanfare, the shock and awe, the gravitas that should have been afforded something like this, is lacking. I mean, your goal in this game is to fight the literal devil, but The Charlie Daniels Band has a better sense of climax than TAG 2. That crucial energy, that drive into absurdism and spectacle, just doesn’t live up to expectations. Sure, it basically stole the portal scene from Avengers: Endgame, but in TAG 2, you don’t know any of the people who show up to help you in the last battle. Yeah, you get to ride a dragon, but only in a cutscene for about ten seconds. Yes, there’s a siege for a giant city with mechs and demon godzilla all over the place, but it doesn’t make any difference. You could realistically ignore all of that and it would be just another level from the base game. I want to fly the dragon, I want to pilot the mech, I want to fight alongside some of these dumbasses who are supposed to be helping me. Where’s the Intern? Why doesn’t he get more a role? Basically, since Doomguy is silent, there’s a constant AI/companion character explaining everything to you, and after certain story events, the last guy helping you out is some intern from the human resistance, who doesn’t even get a name. But he stayed and helped you after you brought the actual soul of the devil to earth. Where’s his story development?
My big idea was to have a final level that spans the length of like two regular levels, filled with giant battles where other good guys, maybe even other humans, are fighting alongside you, on the ground, and you can interact with them and stuff. Dozens of demons at once, impossible odds, but you’ve got help, maybe even by the squid-man and God himself that you killed in TAG 1 (whole other story). And then you have to make it to the boot of a giant robot, piloted by the Intern, who throws you up over the wall of Hell City. You get swooped up by a dragon, which you then get to control and burn down random demons indiscriminately. And then, you make it to the heart of Hell, and you suit up against the devil in a mind-smashing, ball-shattering extravaganza of bullets and explosions and blood until only you are left standing. It would be the most metal, most insane, most DOOM thing imaginable. It would have been awesome. If the final level of TAG 2 wanted to be the true end of the Doomguy saga, it needed at least half of the epic I’m imagining now. Instead, we got maybe 20%. One-third if I’m being generous.
The first two levels in the expansion could have been shit and it wouldn’t have mattered if the last one had been awesome. But neither of those statements are true. All three levels are pretty good, some more questionable enemies that force weapon-switching, and a disappointing lack of extravagant flourish. All of this could have been forgivable if the final boss fight was at least half-decent. But no. And here is TAG 2’s greatest sin, and the reason why the whole thing falls so flat at the very end for me. The last boss sucks ass. Remember those Marauders I mentioned up above? Yeah, the final boss is basically just a giant, angry Marauder on steroids. And you’d think that would be awesome. I thought it would be awesome. Reviews on Steam said “end boss is just big axe man” and “final boss should stick a pencil in its own jugular” and I thought “Well, I liked the marauders well enough, it can’t be that bad, can it?” But no. It can be. The marauders were cool because they’re one-and-done, a special event, an aberration. Another thing to juggle during regular gameplay. But stretch that out and give them five lives? And the ability to heal themselves infinitely? It’s a recipe for disaster. Almost my entire experience with the final boss saw me running around an empty arena, collecting ammo for my Thor hammer (which was actually a cool addition in TAG 2), waiting for the boss to do something useful. The whole point of DOOM enemies is that you throw ludicrous levels of bullets at them, and then they explode. This tried to be something different, and it sucked, so bad. It was one of the most underwhelming boss fights against Satan I’ve ever experienced, and I have experienced several.
Oh, yeah, this is the actual devil. Like, in universe, ruler of hell, a deity from which all beings have sprung forth, with cosmic power. And he wears a suit of armor and you wait for him to let you kill him. It’s stupid. It’s so, so stupid. Like, I get maybe ID really wanted to lean into the “oh, it’s like fighting your equal” sort of thing, so they added the Marauder-style timing window and the fact that he can steal back his health from you. And those things are cool, the first couple times they happen. But the fifteenth, thirtieth, fiftieth time? Not so much. I was seething with rage because the hitboxes on this guy’s attacks are stupid big and restore so much of his health, and I saw five minutes of progress destroyed just because I didn’t dash far enough to the right. But so many things could have fixed this! Maybe make the sword-and-shield just one phase of the fight, then he turns into a giant monster you have to climb up the side of or something, Shadow of the Colossus-style. Or he ditches the suit entirely, and you have to go mano-e-mano against someone who looks and fights just like you (which, by the way, is exactly what happens in DUSK, and it was awesome). Even putting this fight in a more complex arena, with tunnels and loops and things to jump off of would have made it marginally better. But no, it’s just a stupid fight you have to do five times, and then it’s over. Then there’s a neat cutscene where the Doomguy speaks for the first time in 25+ years, which is at least a little epic, but then it’s over. No ceremony, no fanfare, no sense of accomplishment or victory. It’s done, you won, it’s over. Thanks for playing DOOM.
And I guess that’s it. Maybe that’s the most poetic way of ending the series. As it was born from the formless void of the 90’s internet, to zero fanfare, shared between friends via actual floppy disks, then it must go out, ripping and tearing into kicking and screaming into a bloody murmur into an empty silence, with zero fanfare. TAG 2 is not a celebration of all things DOOM, though it looks like it should be. It’s a celebration of some of the things that were great in Eternal and too many of the things that were bad, put together far too quickly or without enough oversight or something. I can only hope that the series picks up again on a high note, though I can’t imagine what that would look like, with this canon Doomguy ending being such a bummer. Hugo Martin, the director of Eternal, has mentioned wanting a female Doomguy, and that would be kind of neat, but we’ll see if it actually happens.
It breaks my heart a little, in a stupid sort of way, to have such a milquetoast ending to one of my favorite games of the last couple years. Same with WandaVision. Same with Control. Same with Star Wars. Same with… god knows what else. Animal Crossing just kind of disappeared in the gutters of my mind at some point, Breath of the Wild’s big DLC was a weird motorcycle, Mario Odyssey got balloons and then nothing else. But maybe these are all just stumbling blocks to something bigger. I just have to hope, because as it stands, I recommend that you play DOOM Eternal as a standalone title and pretend the DLC doesn’t exist, because Eternal is so, so good. Imagine it in a vacuum, and maybe pick up TAG in a Steam sale or something, or as part of an Ultimate Edition bundle in two years. Play DOOM 64, or DUSK, or Amid Evil, they’re all pretty great. Just try not to remember how it ends. But if you do, just remember. I’ll see you in Hell, ripping and tearing. So long, Doomguy.
